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Content Type: Long Read
Period tracking apps and the rollback of reproductive rightsThe aftermath of the overturning of Roe v. Wade in the United States (US) sparked widespread debate and concern that data from period tracking apps could be use to criminalise those seeking abortion care.While the surveillance and criminalisation of reproductive choices are neither new nor unique to the US, the scale and intensity of today’s crisis continue to grow. To put it into perspective, 22 million women and girls of reproductive…
Content Type: Advocacy
The Open informal consultations on lethal autonomous weapons systems, held in accordance with General Assembly resolution 79/62 at the UN in New York on 12-13 May 2025, examined various legal, humanitarian, security, technological, and ethical aspects of these weapons. These consultations aimed to broaden the scope of AWS discussions beyond those held by the Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) at the UN in Geneva. Find out more about what happened during the discussions at Researching Critical…
Content Type: Long Read
If you’ve ever used TikTok, Instagram, or X/Twitter, you will already be familiar with centralised social media.Centralised social media means big company owns the app, controls the software, and keeps all your data.For example, ByteDance makes TikTok. They own it, run the servers, decide what you see in your feed, and hold onto every video you like or comment on. They call the shots when it comes to your data.But what if social media didn’t work that way? What if no single company was in…
Content Type: Long Read
“Hey [enter AI assistant name here], can you book me a table at the nearest good tapas restaurant next week, and invite everyone from the book club?” Billions of dollars are invested in companies to deliver on this. While this is a dream that their marketing departments want to sell, this is a potential nightmare in the making.Major tech companies have all announced flavours of such assistants: Amazon’s Alexa+, Google’s Gemini inspired by Project Astra, Microsoft’s Copilot AI companion and…
Content Type: Press release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASELONDON - 7 April 2025The Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) has confirmed it will hear Privacy International, Liberty and two individuals’ challenge to the legality of the Home Secretary’s decision to use her powers to secretly force Apple to allegedly give the UK Government access to users’ secured data stored on iCloud. The challenge will also cover the legality of the Government issuing these types of notices at all. Privacy International and Liberty,…
Content Type: News & Analysis
We’ve been asked a lot lately about whether it is safe to travel, particularly to the US. And it’s not surprising why: the US Government is increasing their cruelty at borders.Border management today is fueled by our data, but government officials want more. They want as much data as they can get to catch you out. They’ve reportedly detained or deported people based on their free speech activities, denying entry on tenuous grounds like having the wrong photos on phones (including in in the ‘…
Content Type: News & Analysis
As the New York Times reports the health programmes are being cut by USAID cuts, the US Government declares them as “inconsistent with the national interest or agency policy priorities.” Sadly at PI we know the kind of foreign aid that governments believe are in the national interest: surveillance funding.We’re alarmed by aid budgets being cut by governments world-wide. People will be hurt, and people will die.And while most of the news has been dominated by the US’s cuts, the UK and France…
Content Type: Long Read
On 13 March 2025, we filed a complaint against the UK government challenging their use of dangerous, disproportionate and intrusive surveillance powers to undermine the privacy and security of people all over the world. Here, we answer some key questions about the case and the recent events that led to this development.Note: This post was last updated on 13 March 2025.What’s the fuss about?A month ago, it was reported that the UK government demanded Apple Inc – maker of the iPhone, iPads, Macs…
Content Type: Explainer
Imagine this: a power that secretly orders someone anywhere in the world to abide and the receiver can’t tell anyone, can’t even publicly say if they disagree, and can’t really question the power in open court because the secret order is, well, secret. Oh and that power affects billions of people’s security and their data. And despite being affected, we too can’t question the secret order.In this piece we will outline what’s ridiculous, the absurd, and the downright disturbing about what’s…
Content Type: Advocacy
Our submission made the following recommendations to the Committee regarding the Kenya:Review and amend the proposed digital identity system, the Maisha Numba, to ensure it aligns with Kenya’s national and international human rights obligations in its design and implementation, and adopts legal, policy and technical safeguards to prevent exclusion and marginalisation.Ensure that measures taken to develop digital public infrastructures abide by Kenya’s national and international human rights…
Content Type: Long Read
Table of contentsIntroductionWeighing the (potential) benefits with the risksPrivacy rights and the right to healthThe right to healthPrivacy, data-protection and health dataThe right to health in the digital contextWhy the drive for digitalImproved access to healthcarePatient empowerment and remote monitoringBut these same digital solutions carry magnified risks…More (and more connected) dataData leaks and breachesData sharing without informed consentProfiling and manipulationTools are not…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Is the AI hype fading? Consumer products with AI assistant are disappointing across the board, Tech CEOs are struggling to give examples of use cases to justify spending billions into Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) and models training. Meanwhile, data protection concerns are still a far cry from having been addressed.
Yet, the believers remain. OpenAI's presentation of ChatGPT was reminiscent of the movie Her (with Scarlett Johannsen's voice even being replicated a la the movie), Google…
Content Type: Long Read
Introduction
In response to the unprecedented social, economic, and public health threats posed by the Covid-19 pandemic, the World Bank financed at least 232 "Covid-19 Response" projects. The projects were implemented across countries the World Bank classifies as middle and low-income.
This article will focus on eight (8) Covid-19 Response projects which sought to deliver social assistance to individuals and families on a "non-contributory" basis (this means that the intended beneficiaries…
Content Type: News & Analysis
In a ruling handed down on 14 October 2021 by the High Court of Kenya in relation to an application filed by Katiba Institute calling for a halt to the rollout of the Huduma card in the absence of a data impact assessment, the Kenyan High Court found that the Data Protection Act applied retrospectively.
Background to the case
Huduma Namba as initially proposed
In January 2019, the Kenyan Statute Law (Miscellaneous Amendment) Act No. 18 of 2018 came into effect, introducing a raft of amendments…
Content Type: Video
In Kenya, if you don’t have an ID, life can be extremely difficult. But for thousands of people across the country, getting an ID can be nigh on impossible. Some Kenyan citizens can’t obtain a national ID because they are registered in the Kenyan refugee database. Often referred to as victims of double registration, their predicaments reveal a deeper problem with ID itself.
Now Haki na Sheria - a Kenyan organisation advocating for and supporting the victims of double registration - and three…
Content Type: Video
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Content Type: Long Read
Governments around the world are increasingly making registration in national digital ID systems mandatory for populations, justifying its need on a range of issues from facilitating access to services, to national security and fighting against corruption. This is an attempt to create a "foundational identity" for an individual, or "a single source of truth" about who someone is, according to a government agency. These identity systems are run by governments, sometimes by private companies, or…
Content Type: Advocacy
Some of the most vulnerable groups in Mexico are amongst the groups at risk from a draft General Population Law that creates a biometric “Unique Digital Identity Card” (CUID), argue civil society organisations. The proposed law has now reached the senate, and has raised serious concerns from civil society organisations. Led by our global partner in Mexico Red en Defensa de los Derechos Digitales (R3D), PI along with 25 organisations have signed a joint letter to the members of the senate,…
Content Type: News & Analysis
After almost 20 years of presence of the Allied Forces in Afghanistan, the United States and the Taliban signed an agreement in February 2020 on the withdrawal of international forces from Afghanistan by May 2021. A few weeks before the final US troops were due to leave Afghanistan, the Taliban had already taken control of various main cities. They took over the capital, Kabul, on 15 August 2021, and on the same day the President of Afghanistan left the country.
As seen before with regime…
Content Type: Advocacy
On 6 August 2021, the World Health Organisation (WHO) published its technical specifications and implementation guidance for “Digital Documentation of COVID-19 Certificates: Vaccination Status” (DDCC:VS) following months of consultations. As governments around the world are deploying their own Covid-19 certificates, guidance from the global health agency was expected to set a global approach, and one that prioritises public health. As such, we would expect the WHO to identify what these…
Content Type: News & Analysis
This article was written by Abdías Zambrano, Public Policy Coordinator at IPANDETEC, and is adapted from a blog entry that originally appeared here.
Digital identity can be described as our digital personal data footprint, ranging from banking information and statistics to images, news we appear in and social network profiles, interactions with and in digital platforms, and information contained in private and public repositories. Our whole life is online, often leaving us with little choice…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Legislation to "strengthen the integrity of UK elections and protect our democracy" through the Elections Integrity Bill was introduced to parliament this week.
This legislation will require people, for the first time in Great Britain, to show a state-issued photo ID, such as a driving license or passport, in order to exercise their right to vote, perhaps by the 2023 General Elections. The changes would affect elections in England, Scotland and Wales while voters in Northern Ireland are already…
Content Type: Report
Human rights defenders across the world have been facing increasing threats and harms as result of the use of digital and technological tools used by governments and companies which enable the surveillance, monitoring and tracking of individuals and communities. They are continuously at risk of violence, intimidation and surveillance as a direct consequence of the work they do. Such surveillance has been shown to lead to arbitrary detention, sometimes to torture and possibly to extrajudicial…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Unwanted Witness’ research into Safeboda highlighted the company’s failure to comply with some of the law's core data protection principles, with a number of implications for the exercise of data subject rights. The enforcement action against Safeboda by National Information Technology Authority, Uganda (NITA-U) requires the company to make fundamental changes to how they handle people's personal data in order to comply with the Data Protection and Privacy Act, 2019.
This first landmark…
Content Type: Long Read
This report is available in English.
La mayoría de los documentos nacionales de identidad y demás documentos emitidos por autoridades estatales incluyen un marcador de género. Estos marcadores suelen recibir el nombre de “marcador de sexo” aunque este término no sea preciso. La presencia de dichos marcadores, especialmente en los certificados de nacimiento, promueve el énfasis de nuestra sociedad en el género como criterio de asignación de identidades, roles y responsabilidades sociales. Al…
Content Type: Long Read
In 2019, we exposed the practices of five menstruation apps that were sharing your most intimate data with Facebook and other third parties. We were pleased to see that upon the publication of our research some of them decided to change their practices. But we always knew the road to effective openness, transparency, informed consent and data minimisation would be a long one when it comes to apps, which for the most part make profit from our menstrual cycle and even sometimes one’s desire to…
Content Type: News & Analysis
An excerpt of this piece was first published in June 2020 in Adbusters, an international not-for-profit magazine produced by a global collective of artists and activists who want to 'shake up complacent consumer culture'.
Big oil. Big tobacco. Big pharma. How did we let ‘big tech’ happen? You would have thought humanity would learn its lesson. That nothing good comes of the mass accumulation and concentration of power into the hands of so few.
The internet was meant to be different. No…
Content Type: Frequently Asked Questions
On 27 October 2020, the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) issued a report into three credit reference agencies (CRAs) - Experian, Equifax and TransUnion - which also operate as data brokers for direct marketing purposes.
After our initial reaction, below we answer some of the main questions regarding this report.
Content Type: Report
Many countries in the world have existing ID cards - of varying types and prevalence - there has been a new wave in recent years of state “digital identity” initiatives.
The systems that states put in place to identify citizens and non-citizens bring with them a great deal of risks.
This is particularly the case when they involve biometrics - the physical characteristics of a person, like fingerprints, iris scans, and facial photographs.
Activists and civil society organisations around the…
Content Type: Report
A common theme of all major pieces of national jurisprudence analyzing the rights implications of national identity system is an analysis of the systems’ impacts on the right to privacy.
The use of any data by the State including the implementation of an ID system must be done against this backdrop with respect for all fundamental human rights. The collection of data to be used in the system and the storage of data can each independently implicate privacy rights and involve overlapping and…